Category Archives: Programa para niños

The little ones in the house are very happy, anxiously awaiting a special date, September 9, because it’s the celebration of little boys and little girls in Costa Rica. Likewise, many adults with their inner child alive and well also like to celebrate this day.

On this special day, centers of education prepare an incredible day of fun for the little ones. Cultural and recreational activities are organized so that the kids can show off and have fun, dancing, laughing, playing games and smiling. And do you know what is the best part of this day? Yes, the sweets! The icecreams, bags of treats cake and best of all, presents!

With a day like this full of candies and being spoiled, wouldn’t you like to be a kid your whole life? Well I would! And clearly if you check your Facebook these days, you’ll see a ton of pictures of teenagers that say to each other, “We should’ve stayed small forever! We were such little angels.”

The important thing is to remember on this day our childhood and to fight for the rights of children in Costa Rica so that they will live and grow in a peaceful environment, with love around them, being educated and having the freedom that they deserve.

“I think the best way of doing good to the poor is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it.” -Benjamin Franklin

At Instituto Estelar Bilingüe, we believe that education can be the greatest fighter of poverty. For this reason, we are excited about an up-and-coming non-profit organization right here in Liberia! Instituto Estelar is proud to support the efforts of Club A, an organization dedicated to helping local underprivileged children continue in school and excel. Club A provides tutoring, English lessons, and a healthy snack to select groups of children from Nazareth Elementary School. In addition, Club A is raising funds to help pay for the expensive books, uniforms, and supplies that can make attending school difficult or impossible for many Costa Rican children. Instituto Estelar is getting involved by providing the space for these activities as well as English-speaking volunteers. We are delighted to be part of this amazing cause and excited to see the amazing work that Club A will do for the children of Liberia!

You can get involved! Donations and volunteers are needed to help the organization grow and to help as many students as possible. For more information, contact ClubALiberia@gmail.com or donate below.

Learning English can help improve a Costa Rican’s future. At Instituto Estelar, we want to help make English classes available to children who want to learn but need help paying for the materials to do so.

Vera is a single mother living in a low-income neighborhood, and she wants her children to learn English so that they can have better lives and improve their situation. Her six year-old daughter, Keiryn, and eight year-old son, Densel, are eager to study English and have been asking to take classes for some time.

We recently enrolled Keiryn and Densel into our kids program and gave them scholarships to cover their monthly tuition. An organization that gives shoes to needy children, Souls Helping Soles, will be giving them new shoes to wear to school and future English classes. However, we still need help paying for their books. The books cost 30.000 colones and we already have 10.000 in donations.

You can help send these stellar children to school with the materials they need!

If you are interested in donating, please contact the director, Bethany, at Info@estelarcr.com or 2665-6921. Thank you so much for helping us give this opportunity to local children!

Vera, showed here with her two full-scholarship children in Instituto Estelar Bilingüe’s Kid’s English Program, works hard to keep our campus clean.

Last Friday night, we celebrated Thanksgiving at Instituto Estelar Bilingüe with our friends in the community – around 200 of them! As always, it was potluck style, so each person brought food to share. The English teachers and school director prepared the traditional Thanksgiving dishes, like stuffing (we found Stovetop!), mashed potatoes, greenbean casserole, pumpkin pie, etc. We substituted chicken for turkey since turkey is really pricey here, but no one seemed to notice the difference.

We opened the event by explaining that Thanksgiving in the United States is a time to reflect on what we are thankful for. It is also a time to be with family, and since we (the gringos) are alone without our families here in Costa Rica, we invited the community to be our family.

After dinner, we had a lovely graduation ceremony for English students (not all attended the ceremony).

Finally, we surprised the kids with a Turkey piñata, which was handmade by two of our English students, Silvia and Kattya Alvarado!

Our guests really enjoyed the event and told us so repeatedly. It was a really special time, and we will do it again next year!